April 7-13, 2005

cover story

Crawling From the Wreckage

Midwinter Night's Dream

From Serbia to Rwanda to Great Britain, surviving war is only the beginning.

by Sam Adams

It's one thing to win a war, another to survive it. The invasion of Iraq has proved that victory carries as heavy a burden as defeat. As for the nebulous "war on terror": Have we won? Is it over? How can we live without knowing? The U.S. is not the first country to face such questions; though the Bush administration has done its best to alienate us from the world, this year's Philadelphia Film Festival proves we may not be so far apart. India's Black Friday addresses the fallout from a 1993 terrorist bombing, while Argentina's D'as de Santiago confronts the society's failure to help army veterans re-enter civilian life. In Brothers, a Danish soldier goes missing in in Afghanistan, while Korea's R-Point, a bloody ghost story set during the war in Vietnam, reflects the nation's recent history of violence. Even the older offerings are products of wartime: Samuel Fuller's The Big Red One, based on his service in World War II; Robert Downey Sr.'s Putney Swope, a racial satire informed by black militarism and the Vietnam War; even the 1920 The Last of the Mohicans, whose starkly realistic battles were inspired by the memory of World War I.

In essence, film festivals are about connection. We've picked three stories of postwar recovery from the festival's offerings — films that differ in tone, setting and date but share a common goal: helping countries rebuild themselves. As we reckon with the events of 9/11 and the self-inflicted harm that followed, it helps to remember that we are not alone.

Goran Paskaljevic's producer isn't sure where to reach him, so when I e-mail Paskaljevic to set up our interview, I ask what country I'll be calling. "My country is Serbia," he writes back.

It's a striking declaration from a filmmaker who as recently as the 1999 release of Cabaret Balkan (known elsewhere as The Powder Keg) was determined to call himself Yugoslavian. That movie, released in the waning days of the Milosevic regime, painted a bleak, brutal picture of life on the streets of Belgrade. At the time, Paskaljevic told me that since the ascent of Milosevic, "the atmosphere changed. People became very nervous, aggressive. ... We are all a little powder keg waiting to explode."

Six years later, the situation has improved only slightly, though Milosevic's ouster allowed Paskaljevic, an open critic of his regime, to return after years of living in Paris. Paskaljevic was, he says, "full of hope." But in March 2003, Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, a democratic reformer who helped bring Milosevic to justice, was assassinated outside his government headquarters, plunging the country into turmoil. Milosevic's allies came out of the woodwork. "I understood that these forces aren't going to let us go easily to democracy," Paskaljevic says. "Somehow, they stole the money during the Milosevic period, and now they are buying [back] their political positions."

The notion of return is central to Midwinter Night's Dream, Paskaljevic's first feature since his homecoming. Lazar (Lazar Ristovski), his face etched with a decade of sorrow, returns to his small town after a decade in prison (a sentence that coincides with the period since Yugoslavia's breakup). He finds that everything, and nothing, has changed. His mother has died, and living in her house are two Serbian refugees from Bosnia, a mother (Jasna Zelica) and her autistic daughter (Jovana Mitic). Lazar becomes obsessed with "curing" the young girl's autism despite a friend's warning that "you can't do something about everything." Attempting at once to resume his life and start a new one, Lazar gets no help from his neighbors, who have to be reminded to return his grandmother's furniture, and friends, who hide rather than pay back their debts.

The girl's echolalia, a symptom characterized by the repetition of overheard phrases, acts as a comment on Serbia's own repetitions; as a doctor tells Lazar, "Sometimes whole societies start to panic as a result of fear and lose coherence." Paskaljevic admits that when he conceived Mitic's character, he saw her primarily as "this political metaphor." But once he began filming with Mitic, who is genuinely autistic, the "screenplay became much more personal, very simple and emotionally strong." Using digital video, Paskaljevic was able to shoot until Mitic's natural behavior fit the scene. DV thus made the movie possible twice over, since he would never have been able to find the financing to shoot on film in Serbia.

At least metaphorically, Mitic isn't the only autistic character. Lazar, Paskaljevic says, is "also autistic, because he cannot forget and is fallen by his past. The war and his crime made such an impact on him that he cannot be a normal person." Lazar's crime and his service are intimately related, Paskaljevic says: It was the post-traumatic stress of combat that led Lazar to kill his best friend in a pointless brawl, putting him in a prison from which he has yet to emerge.

Although Lazar attempts to atone for his crime, he is rebuffed as if his friend never existed, which for Paskaljevic epitomizes the country's failure to confront its own past. "I think we have to think about our crimes, and not to say always the others made the crimes. There is no excuse." Until then, he says, his country will remain in a state of depression, both economic and emotional. Although the situation is not as explosive as it was at the time of Cabaret Balkan, violence is still apt to erupt at any moment — as it does, shockingly, at Midwinter's conclusion. Now violence is so random as to be "absurd," and as often directed inward as out; suicide rates, he says, are higher than ever.

Midwinter's sketch of Serbian life is unrelentingly bleak, and Paskaljevic says audiences never fail to ask why his movie doesn't hold out more hope. But it is clear he feels, in this moment, that hope is only an illusion, a dream that has been crushed underfoot. "The people have lost hope here," he says. "They thought after Milosevic it will be better, and it started to be better. We felt real hope and had a leader with vision, and they killed him. They killed him like a dog in the street. How can you feel?"

Paskaljevic sees a hard road ahead. "It took the Germans 20 years to understand what happened in the camps," he says, and believes Serbia's own self-reckoning will be equally prolonged. But, perhaps as an act of will more than faith, he is preparing a new feature, which he envisions as the third in a trilogy with Cabaret Balkan and Midwinter Night's Dream. The Optimist concerns a man who cures Serbians of their depression in the only way possible — by hypnosis. After that, Paskaljevic thinks, maybe he won't make films for a while.

Midwinter Night's Dream screens Mon., April 11, 7 p.m., Ritz East; and Tue., April 12, noon, Ritz East.

Shake Hands with the Devil

"To me, it seemed like going back into hell," says Roméo Dallaire in Shake Hands with the Devil, the documentary that follows him back to Rwanda 10 years after the 1994 genocide, which by conservative estimates took 800,000 lives in 100 days. Dallaire commanded the pitifully small United Nations force which vainly tried to halt the carnage. He struggled within the U.N. bureaucracy to augment his forces as it became clear the country was headed for crisis and took his mission public when internal politics failed, attempting to shame the West into action. His cries went unheeded: 1,500 troops were marshaled to evacuate whites, but Belgium, whose colonial policies effectively created the specious racial distinction that fomented the genocide, withdrew all its troops when 10 Belgian paratroopers were killed by Hutu militia. Still visibly haunted by what he considers his failure, Dallaire says, "I was chopped at the knees. I had this thing in the bag and it was taken away from us."

Shake Hands director Peter Raymont admits that, like many Westerners, he "missed" the 1994 genocide, "distracted" by the overwhelming TV coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial. It wasn't until he visited Rwanda in 1999 to make the documentary In Search of Hope that Raymont began to take the full measure of the genocide. The man in charge of estimating the death toll for the Rwanda government, whom he revisited when returning to the country in 2004, was one of his interview subjects. "Even last year, they're still finding mass graves," Raymont says. "He thinks [the death toll] is over 2 million."

Dallaire lived through the genocide, but it took its toll. His descent into alcoholism became public when he was discovered sleeping under a park bench in Montreal, and he readily admits attempting suicide and taking pills to stay "reasonable." The son of a soldier himself, Raymont was as impressed by Dallaire's personal candor as his determination to speak out about Western indifference. "He's not your image of the stoic general," Raymont says. "Here's a guy standing there saying he was scared shitless, a guy who's not afraid to tell the world he's tried to kill himself several times, that he needs to seek psychiatric treatment. It's not a weakness. It's an injury. I think it's his humble nature which not only has made him suffer so much, but has made him so compelling as a human being."

Dallaire, whose book Shake Hands with the Devil has been on the Canadian best-seller lists since October of 2003, has re-emerged as an outspoken critic of the U.N. and the West, including President Clinton, whose if-only-we'd-known apology Raymont and his subjects dismiss as preposterous. Stephen Lewis, appointed by the Organization of African Unity to investigate the genocide, practically sneers as he says, "He knew. Of course he knew." Raymont adds, "The Clinton administration had made a very conscious decision after Mogadishu not to get involved in any more peacekeeping missions in Africa. And that was that."

Dallaire in turn has been criticized, including an ugly incident in the film where he is attacked by a Belgian senator for allowing the deaths of the Belgian paratroopers and for "refusing" to meet with their widows, a charge that is downgraded to not offering a meeting once the news cameras stop rolling. Much as Dallaire wanted to meet with Rwandans and share the country's grief, Raymont says a major reason for his return was to scout the building where the Belgians were pinned down and see if his judgment that any attempt to save them would have been a suicide mission was in error. Dallaire believes he made the right decision.

The worst charge that sticks, Shake Hands argues, is that Dallaire was naive about the U.N.'s inner workings. But given his public campaign and the United States' determination to abstain, it's hard to believe Dallaire alone could have shifted the momentum. Raymont, whose father, Col. Robert Raymont, was a senior officer in Canada's Ministry of Defence and was involved in the creation of NATO and NORAD, says that before learning about Rwanda, he "still suffered from the belief that the U.N. was a community of nations. I didn't really understand the power of the security council, particularly the permanent members. They really do control what the U.N. does."

Dallaire's crippling sense of guilt seems to spring from the same source as his noble actions: his sense of individual responsibility. While Rwandans have used the Gacaca tribunals to take collective responsibility for healing the country, Dallaire seems to think of himself as a man alone. Shake Hands with the Devil shows Dallaire beginning to lay down his burden, understanding that he did what he could and being reminded that the U.N. safe zones he established saved thousands of lives.

Shake Hands points out that Dallaire's suffering is but a reflection of Rwanda's. "The whole country suffers from post-traumatic stress," Raymont says. "The whole country needs thousands of psychiatrists. They'll never have them, of course. It'll take a couple of generations for the country to get back on its feet. Are the children going to continue that hatred? Are they going to get beyond it? Will the child who saw his parents killed in front of his eyes be able to forgive? That's a very different way of dealing with stress and hatred than what Dallaire's going through."

The wounds, Dallaire's and Rwanda's, linger, though a variety of nongovernmental organizations, including the Roméo Dallaire Foundation, are attempting to rebuild the country. (Raymont says they, like the International Criminal Tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, are badly underfunded and in need of contributions.) Worse, history is repeating itself in Sudan. In 1994, the U.S. shamefully refused to use the word "genocide" in relation to Rwanda while admitting the existence of "acts of genocide," since our commitment to the U.N. convention on genocide requires the U.S. to act when genocide is declared. Last year, however, George W. Bush used the term to refer to the situation in Sudan, yet the killing continues largely unchecked. "It's horrific when you think about it," Raymont says. "Here we are, 11 years later. Another celebrity trial, and another genocide."

Shake Hands with the Devil screens Sat., April 9, 12:15 p.m., The Bridge; and Sun., April 10, 2:30 p.m., International House.

I Know Where I'm Going!

In 1945, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were faced with the difficult task of conceiving postwar entertainment while World War II was still being fought. They could be almost certain that the war would be over by the time the movie that would become I Know Where I'm Going! was completed, so it fell to them to imagine what postwar Britain might look and feel like. Echoes of the war are everywhere, from a reference to the scarcity of nylon stockings to the RAF uniform worn by Roger Livesey's Scottish laird, home on an eight-day furlough. As Joan, a headstrong young woman determined to secure her future by marrying the head of Consolidated Chemical Industries (whose name carries just a hint of war profiteering), Wendy Hiller is the spirit of British pragmatism, rushing headlong into the future, propriety be damned. By contrast, Livesey's Torquil has seen the horrors of war and comes back as determined as ever to reclaim Britain's past. No mere traditionalist — he's as likely to wear his uniform as his kilt — Torquil is skeptical of the lust for wealth likely to follow years of wartime privation. When Joan refers to a group of Scottish islanders as "poor," Torquil responds, "They aren't poor. They just haven't any money."

Thelma Schoonmaker, Powell's wife at his death in 1990 — and, incidentally, the longtime Martin Scorsese editor who won her second Oscar in March — says the state of postwar Britain was very much on Powell's mind. "People were very worried that Britain had sacrificed so much during the war that everyone would become extremely materialistic right after it ended," she says. "That was what the film was about, trying to make people remember that there are better things than material possessions." Teasing out the distinctions between Powell and Pressburger's contributions to their collaborative films is a fool's game, but I Know Where I'm Going! shares a love of the Scottish countryside with Powell's solo The Edge of the World, and Schoonmaker says the movie's political subtext sounds like Powell as well: "He was always for the underdog, deeply interested in revolution. He loved certain English traditions, but he was the first to notice when they were doing harm."

Powell and Pressburger had tried their hand at wartime propaganda with 1943's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a satire of old-guard conservatism starring Livesey as the puffed-up colonel. Perhaps not surprisingly, the military didn't appreciate the joke. But Schoonmaker says the pair were "constantly talking with the Ministry of Information about what Britain needed at that time." Surely Powell and Pressburger felt that the last thing Britons wanted after years of being shelled was a movie that dwelled on the war, but unlike the escapist American musicals of the time, I Know deals quite directly with the uncertainty of Britain's postwar identity. Thus the confrontation between tradition and enterprise as Joan and Torquil are forced by bad weather to keep each other's company, an inconvenience that becomes less arduous as their inevitable attraction to each other grows. In a sense, the movie's tightrope walk between acknowledging the war and not brooding on it reflects the balance Scorsese struck in Gangs of New York, whose subtle reference to the Sept. 11 attacks gave a hint of resonance to its story of the city's past cataclysms. "We tried to get the Civil War into Gangs," Schoonmaker says, "but it would have taken a whole other film."

Schoonmaker, who will introduce the film and sit for a Q and A afterward, chose I Know Where I'm Going! for the festival's centennial Powell tribute not because it's her favorite, but because she feels it's the best introduction to Powell's work. Powell's films, particularly those with Pressburger, can be daunting in their elaborate style, although the initiated might long for something on the order of Colonel Blimp or Black Narcissus. "If there's going to be people who've never seen a Powell film before, this one is so fetching, it tends to draw people in and have them possibly want to see more."

I Know Where I'm Going! screens Sun., April 10, 2:15 p.m., Prince Music Theater, followed by Q and A with Thelma Schoonmaker.

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